other grown-up man would be bored by an adolescent girl on every level except the—well, anyway.”
I cut myself off when I see several alarmed faces staring at me and Cleveland hiding a grin behind his hand as he leans forward to cup his chin. I know him well enough by now to be able to tell that there are all sorts of inappropriate things he is not saying, and while I am struggling not to respond to something he has not actually said, I have a sudden vision of Cleveland in a gray Confederate uniform, or a brown cutaway, vest and white collar, or a blue flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to display his long, sinewy arms, his long, sinewy fingers…and that lean face, so sensitive, so intelligent that I am itching to grab him and fuck him till he begs me to let him come.
Oh, I hate Englishmen.
This one in particular. After his customary flippancy early on, he does nothing to protect Selena from Beecher and his henchmen, who round on her till she caves in completely. That she does not burst into tears is about all, but her monosyllabic answers become so painful that I have to withdraw my mind from the situation and keep thinking shut the fuck up to stop myself from intervening. It is like a deer being baited by blood-crazed hounds, with the rest of us standing by, careful to keep away from the fray.
When it is all over, we disperse quickly and quietly. I find myself walking back toward the Observatory with Cleveland, fuming.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I burst out.
“Sorry?”
He looks down at me as if he was only now realizing that I’m here.
“Back in the meeting! Why were these…historians allowed to annihilate Selena like that?”
The gray-dappled green eyes focus on me and narrow, with condescension or impatience, I can’t tell.
“Because no one stopped them,” he says.
“That’s what I mean! Why didn’t you stop them?”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
I stare at him, confused. He’s evidently trying to provoke me, and I really don’t see why he should be doing that.
“I couldn’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m nobody! Because Beecher wouldn’t listen to me anyway! But if you had told him to belt up—”
“It was Selena’s job to do that.”
“Well, she tried—you could see that she was trying! It was our job to protect her! I have to shut up, but you could have shut him up!”
“Bring in the cavalry, you mean?”
We walk up the steps to the entrance and almost come to a halt. Is he going to open the door for me, or am I going to go first? Or have we decided to dispense with polite gestures altogether? My level of adrenaline is so high that I step forward and hold the door open for him; he walks in, and when he catches my eyes and cocks a sardonic eyebrow, my blood reaches boiling point.
“You were the only one there from whom Beecher would have taken it! Which means that you were the only one there who could have prevented the last ninety minutes from being a complete nightmare for one of our grad students, and a complete waste of time for everyone else!”
“You are making my knees buckle. Such a weight of responsibility.”
“Which you refuse to accept!”
“I do. Because I, unlike you, know how to choose my battles! Now listen! Listen, once and for all!”
The tone of his voice makes me turn round on the stairs, and my blood runs cold. Face to face with him, because he’s two steps lower down, I can see that I have managed to upset him. His lips are tight with anger and his eyes hard as green glass.
“I do not believe in letting graduate students paddle about the shallow end with water wings on! Sel—” He hushes himself, but that only seems to make him fiercer. “The student insisted that she was ready to present, and it was not for me to veto her! And before you point out that her paper was feeble, permit me to say that I knew that! I knew it, and I told her, but she would not listen! I have told her on two different occasions that she should not attempt a doctorate degree, but she would not listen!”
“But it was a shambles!”
“Yes, it was,” he agrees, breathing hard. “But so is the job-market situation in the Humanities. Even if she pulled through, she would never find an academic job out there that would suit